harassing by Tanzanian immigration, ending with my

midnight arrest at gunpoint and imprisonment and

an outright attempt to get hold of the dhow by

banning me on short notice from the country without giving me the opportunity to take my dhow and without returning the dhow building contract they had seized,

a painstaking remote controlled liberation of the dhow, customs clearing (see Head Quarters Jinja) and

leave for chaotic trip to Uganda with an unfinished ship that was under way going to be

kidnapped for ransom by a donor country subsidized Tanzania police patrol boat in Bukoba Region.

But in the end Ben landed precisely in the night I was lying 4 km before Jinja, waiting for light and wind to sail in the next morning.

Wednesday 06/03/29
The day of arrival. We are free. The Tanzanian crew enjoys hotel drinks, food, and cigarettes on the commander's hotel bill (it would take me several days to extinguish that one day celebration mode definitively).

Thursday 06/03/30
Caulking the deck day 1: the TZ crew started to apply the dearly obtained SIKAFLEX, released on departure, from Daniel's thieves' claws by Philemon only with heavy pressure.
I start my job of contacting local government officers. Not at ease about it, the sensational misbehaviour of Tanzanian government authorities fresh in mind, as well as warnings by prudent Ugandans. What would I meet? What would they start trying with me? Fortunately, I know that Jinja immigration is friendly. Expiring visa are extended in this office without any greedy predators asking you to wait or otherwise asking for money. So, I headed for their office first, with my crew's passports. Apart from being short of entry registering forms - we used exit and stroke out exit specific questions - the officers were clearly friendly and cooperative. I got courage to simply state the case: my boys brought the boat, and were now going to finish it. That was OK. THEY NEEDED NO BUSINESS VISA! (In Tanzania, for sitting on my lazy chair next to my boat under construction by the yard, immigration had determined I so urgently needed to buy a business visa that they had decided to arrest me, midnight, at gunpoint with six police in civilian with guns (see surfboard: immigration, arrested at gunpoint and jailed). Moreover, the crew's passports were stamped by Jinja immigration for entry without time limit. We would just keep in touch. Uganda, heaven on earth! This gave me courage to ask Jinja Immigration for other officers that I would have to meet. To my surprise, that was not primarily customs, but ISO, the Internal Security Organization.
That sounded like bad news indeed. But it turned out to be a run down former colonial home with a boss and a boy, Kasim, the boss always off, the office thoroughly idle. Laundry hanging about, some visiting friends relaxing on the dangerously rotten veranda. When my immigration office friends called "ISO" to announce me, I already heard them ask ironically about us: they are here since yesterday morning, are you aware of it?
Kasim clearly was delighted to have some work. I showed him the boat. He was supposed to do a cargo inspection. A useless procedure indeed since every dhow can drop questionable cargo at a near island before having itself inspected, collecting it afterwards. Anyway he was curious. He took papers of boat and copies of customs out clearing Tanzania.
Then, it was clear to me this could be a useful man. I asked him to join me to the Customs Office. He volunteered, introduced me there as "his friend", and asked, in local language, what should be done. I felt in the back seat to a comfortable and secure embedding of my dhow in Ugandan society.
Unfortunately, Kasim had to explain to customs what is ISO.
Customs looked at my papers, then told me what papers I needed (exactly the ones they had just looked at), and then told me that to submit and process those papers I would need a clearing agent.
Now, you should know, my attitude to "clearing agents" has changed. After I had discovered that clearing agents milk customers on behalf of themselves and the customs officers they "protect", their image in my mind had gone down to the level where I knocked a particularly aggressive one down at the Busia border. But after having seen Tanzanian government officers, displeased with my refusal to comply with corruption, with guns over my bed at midnight (surfboard: jailed etc.), the "clearing agent" got restored  in my mind as a useful personality -  though the name of their job will of course never get out of quotation marks. Moreover, this time the clearing procedure, undoubtedly a matter for weeks and weeks of deliberation between all parties interested, was of no meaning to me: my boat had arrived and we could do what we wanted. So, I decided to take my time finding a clearing agent, who, in his turn, undoubtedly would take his time to clear.
I would just wait to hear a name of one of them from a white or Indian whom he had given a good impression.

Friday 06/03/31
Caulking the deck day 2; Ben and I went to Kampala to replace tools and the fridge stolen by Daniel, and some foldable camping chairs.

Photo left 06/03/31:
Caulking the deck in the blasting sun:
a hell job according to Rabelais' Epistemon.

Photo left (continued):
View down on hell  from heaven above is of
Mohammed's description.

Saturday 06/04/01
Caulking the deck 3; Crew Robert, Mazoya, one of my "security" sleepers had somehow come in grace with Philemon. To my displeasure, I had found him as crew in Kasanssero. Now, he does not want to stay to help the boat finishing and leaves by bus. I buy his ticket: naturally, all Philemon's friends are my friends.
The deck is too hot for caulking progress. The primer is finished. Bloody SIKA SA guys did not even know the ratio of primer to kit. No more contact with SIKA SA, not even for a million (see Sika Struggle). We buy clear two component acrylic paint to use as "primer" for the Sikaflex. I order a beautiful muvule (wood type) desk blade. The commander's full stock of cloth (sail excluded) is sent to the washers

Sunday 06/04/02
Caulking the deck day 4, we mount the kitchen sink, prepare for drainage tubes (outlet pipes on all decks to quickly drain water from deck to lake)

Monday 06/04/03

Photo: Monday 06/04/03: Ben boards

Ben boards, even though we yet have nothing but the rope ladder for him to mount his massive body. 

Jinja Week 2

Tuesday 06/04/04

Photo: Dhow (right, behind tree) in tropical rainstorm. Down left the foot (see arrow) of the 80 m Hotel Triangle Annex concrete stairs, a wild brook in these conditions (designed for the purpose)

Still, at least one rain storm every day, all water straight down in hold, ankle deep wading down there between wet books (Rabelais and my cherished Criminal History of Christianity Part One to Five, more parts in progress) and even the coolbox containing my cigars got its share: a pool of water on the bottom. Wet cigars even freely floating in the hull's bottom water, carefully put to dry on deck between the rain storms.
I am given, finally, yes, the name of a clearing agent thought reliable!
Philemon, with disturbed facial expression, tells me that the crew has had a thought: since they were sleeping in the boat, they were also security and wanted to be paid accordingly. I agree to add the modest fee I paid my "security" sleepers at Bwiru bay, Mwanza, Tanzania. Crew agrees. No real financial pain, but since the "security" argument is quite far-fetched my worry becomes, however, that time gets spent on finding the weirdest of reasons for wage rises rather than on working, and that Philemon, their boss, the one who knows the English to target me with the shit is going to be the victim of time consuming palavers.

Wednesday 06/04/05
We prepare for Ben's movements through the boat: make main cabin stairs from 2" hardwood. Ben and I go to Kampala for: band sanding  machine, electricity tubes, solar panels and regulator. My money here is almost finished. A delay in arrival of new money is caused by an account application form of Standard Chartered resembling a police interrogation form as you have them in bureaucracy clogged countries like The Netherlands. After a moment of clear though I shift to Crane Bank, soundly run by practically thinking Indians. But then, stuffed with Crane Bank account, ING bank Netherlands e-bank pages are down, as they are often (if you mail them about it, they say they have no problems...yes but I have...).
Kasim, now my personal Internal Security Officer, returned on the dhow site. He showed himself depressed: I had not come yet for another chat. Had I forgotten him?
No, Kasim, but we are delayed with caulking, so there was little news. But I have a job for you: later on I want to introduce myself to Jinja lake police, may be you can join me when I go there. Also, I have heard that NEMA, the million dollar donor country Uganda environment office, will probably not allow me, as they allow any latrine pit owner and hippo, just to shit in the lake, so I will go there and ask them what toilet system they want me to install, probably some closed toilet with a bad chemical to be dumped a bit further down the river exit, Cairo here we come!
Kasim thought those good ideas. He added: ISO Jinja had decided desperately to need the owner's curriculum vitae. He uses that very word!
I told them his government had already got one on the occasion of my application for permanent visa, but was ready to print a copy as soon as my printer was unpacked.
Disappointment. Kasim had longed for studying it carefully even today.
I agree to burn a copy on CD. The next day I discover that the Nile Source Internet Caf� computer reads and prints files uploaded in my new camera, so I bring Kasim a brand new version of my curriculum vitae, on real paper!
 

After seeing I wrote a book together with its president I could only hope the ISO perceived Uganda security threat of me and my dhow was going to decay in boredom. But this of course is infinitely better than, as in Tanzania, having to set out men to scan the horizon for government officer's guns.

Thursday 06/04/06
News: "Security" Mazoya, who left five days ago for home, with a bus ticket I personally purchased for him, got kicked out of his bus liner in Kenya. Personnel claimed his ticket was faulty. A new thug organization on my list. I could tell them to pay damage within 8 days, if not, newspaper publicity and ticket office warnings about them all over East Africa. What can I squeeze out of them? $10 000? Probably better $2000, if I really want to receive the money. No negotiations.
Incredible again, this story. Bus personnel, company and bus trip known. They want to be crooks but do not now how to do it!
Spontaneously a password-greeting ritual had arisen among crew: up�po up�po... si lazima!  Meaning wind, wind...we do not need it! (because we are now carpenters). It has become obsolete because taken over by entire hotel staff. A few days later, I even hear up�po up�po on the Jinja market.

Friday 06/04/07
At breakfast, my anchor lines are full of birds. Kingfishers, hotel staff explains. I retaliate by teaching them the local Netherlands name of the omnipresent cormorant, a low buoyancy long necked bird diving deep and far for fish, using the wings for propulsion under water: aalscholvers.

Photo For My Mother: Cormorants At The Sailing Club Jetty

In Holland the aalscholvers are so well environmentally protected by some The Hague Government nuts that its plague has killed most of the Netherlands's fresh water fish stock to extinction. My mother loves them so much that she keeps pointing every one she sees, prompting my sisters to what has become a family dictum: "Mother, stop about those aalscholvers".  Polyester ship decks dissolve in their droppings. The requirement for restoration of eco balance in the Dutch lakes (obviously to the regret of my Mother), is first restoration of eco balance in the relevant The Hague ministries. Everywhere in the hotel I hear personnel practicing: aalscholvers aalscholvers aalscholvers.

Saturday 06/04/08
Caulking finally finalized. We had to use painter's tape because SIKA's bondbraker tape was too narrow and not sticking to the wood. We had been given primer in too small a proportion to the kit. Finally, my calculation of kid quantity, 65 cartridges, was 5% below target, so we had to finish the "traditional" way, filling the seems between planks with a mix of two component acrylic paint and fine saw dust.
ING Netherlands e-banking was ON! (three days ago), so I did a speed wire 10 000 euro to my new Crane Bank account Jinja. Should take two days at most. The money has not yet arrived on my account. A similar speed wire dated 06/03/13 of 1200 euro to a Tanzanian account of a friend  throwing my money around in Mwanza to get the dhow free, due to arrive 06/03/15 at the latest, has not arrived, neither did it bounce back to the sender e-bank account. That is more than three weeks now. So the total amount of money that should have reached somewhere right now but unaccounted for in bank cyberspace has now risen 11 200 euro. In Tanzania I had problems three times earlier, so there clearly is a gang at work. De ING Netherlands-Crane Bank Uganda connection has, however worked before, and anyhow is unrelated to Tanzania thugs. Balance will reach zero mid next week. Ben still has some dollars and euro's.

Photo: Generator almost total loss, Ben pumps after rain storm on battery with the new solar panels.
All boat shit put once again to dry. Commander resigns to Ben's wish to buy board plate for Local Electro Ironical Panel (LEIP). Ben likes to fill the entire ship with it, but no: ONE ONLY!!

The generator "did not start", crew complained. My hero engine repairman Moses finds all piston rings reduced to tiny pieces. Run without mixing 2T oil, his positive conclusion. Crew denies. USh 85 000/= damage (60% of the $ 70 price if a new one). We do not want the crew shift to scooping rain water, so I make sieves for the pump (the bottom water is polluted with saw waste and cardboard) and Ben connects them to the battery and our brand new solar panels. Now the sun scoops the ship and the scoopers can keep making beds.
 

Photo: 1,2,..,6 ready beds, 7 Commander bed with Bens LEIP (Local Electro Ironical Panel), all under construction, planned at bed side against board. 8 desk, 9 piano, 10 kitchen sink, 11 heavy duty stairs (Ben!!!), 12 LOTS of bloody water.

Whoever feels urge to say it is better to close deck and fix hatches first should BE CAREFUL and SHUT UP (I mean I shut up because I do not want to deviate from what appears to be Tanzanian routine).
At the end of the day Philemon looked disturbed. I knew that face from an earlier occasion when he was harassed by his crew to have him come to me with stories and arguments leading to money demands. Indeed this was the case again. Now, on day 12, they seemed to have forgotten that they had been hired for three weeks and claimed the next jobs were not in the contract. I told Philemon to tell them that if they could find a better boss, they should go there, and I would be paying the bus ticket. Philemon asked time to separate the good guys from the bad. I could buy bus tickets for the latter. But while in the restaurant Ben and I decided to make the good Philemon's life easy: we will just tell the TZ crew that their job is done. They can all go. We bring them - including the good Philemon! - gratefully to the bus stop, embrace everyone and there they go. Thus, Philemon would not be compromised, and not have to confess colour between whom he deems "good" and "bad" guys. It would give Ben and me the opportunity to dismantle some of the worst constructions concocted by the gentlemen and do some other troubleshooting without insulting the jolly makers. Next time I would call Philemon for a sailing crew, he would know whom to take and whom wisely not even to inform about the new jobs.
What is with Bert? Crew asked Philemon, after having seen him voicing their urgent money concerns to me and seen me profoundly irritated. He is our friend! (this is normal in the negro BIOS, friendliness is a sign of submission and they will try to take over. When they see you angry, they start to fear and get friendly).
Helpers out! The crew gets my news: they can go now. Kazi imemaliza ("the job is finished"). Philemon receives my calculation of payments: I paid slightly too much for three weeks, we are on day 13, and I do not need my money back. The crew gets my news: they can go. Kazi imemaliza.

Monday 06/04/10
Philemon, I ask, did you check my calculation?
Philemon explains, embarrassed, the crew wanted money. "They are greedy", Philemon explains. The body language suggest that I am advised to solve the problem by pulling my wallet. I get very angry again.
Who does not trust the result of my calculation of payments: namely that I paid slightly too much, can leave the ship right now!!
Control yourself, Philemon says. You are a man.
I cool down. Yes Philemon, you are right, I forgot. I am a man.
We drop the subject. It is Monday. Bus tickets have not yet been bought and will be only for tomorrow anyway.
Of course, nobody is doing anything. They sit, watch Ben at work, yawn, wash some clothes, eat. At the end of the day I have the shopping done for one job that only one man can do, fortunately the best after Philemon: Immanuel. He has the muscles and the courage to climb the 12 m mast and mount the tackle for the crane and the rope ladder that I can use to do future mast top jobs myself.

Photo: Ben watches last job of Tanzanian crew Immanuel: fixing mast top tackle at 12 m.
On return to Mwanza, somebody had paid Tanzania police to have Immanuel arrested for a murder committed at the time you  see him here in the mast, watched by 10 witnesses from the dhow, and another 50 from Hotel Triangle. No witnesses have been asked for. [Last update 060616, Immanuel still in jail without trial.]

After six days of work, hard or not, my clearing agent visited the site. I was out. I phoned. He reports on that no problems have arisen thus far, and tomorrow there will be visit to the boat. A good idea, certainly in case we, after being here for two weeks, might have forgotten to load off all sensitive stuff we may have had on board.

Jinja Week 3

Tuesday 06/04/11
I wake up with a plan how to finalize with the crew and kick them out. I go and buy bus tickets. At first, they had feared to go with the AKAMBA bus line, who had kicked my security sleeper Mazoya out, but since alternatives were cumbersome they complied with my suggestion to go with a hidden copy of the ticket containing the phone numbers of their ticket office seller and office boss.
My clearing agent visits the boat. But not with customs: with an assistant who is to be briefed how to do the job. The assistant asks me five questions, all  five answerable by reading my papers that are already six days with the agent, which the assistant had been carrying and reading on arrival - funny, but far from my strongest anecdote on Africans dealing with paper work. This seemed to be the "business" they had come for.
Then, I have my Kiswahili declaration checked with Philemon, which states: Lambertus hamminga has paid all money for my work of finishing the dhow in Jinja, April,..... No errors. I order Philemon to call the crew together. Some seem reluctant. Then I give a speech: that this dhow is now here in Jinja is a miracle. For God this was not an easy miracle to process, He is even proud of Himself. Since you are the ones He used, He is also proud of you. I am grateful. Now everybody can sign this statement. After that you will receive a free bus ticket and you can go home.
They come one by one, sign, have their hand shaken. The two most despicable of nitwits I even embrace, as I learned to do in my Ideal African Public Officer Flic Flac (IAPOFF).
To my surprise, this little function broke the ice completely. Everybody walked around very happy with his free bus ticket, and thought of home. The mood got excellent indeed. Big smiles. Philemon and I even had big smiles about the big smiles.
Will they try to steal anything on leave Philemon? Do need to have their luggage searched by a security service at the bus stop?
No, they will not steal. I have been watching them continuously, and always took care for clear separation of their luggage and boat items..
I decide to take the risk and not to spoil the party with a phone call to security.
At noon, crew leaves the hotel. The boat side entrance to the terrace where Ben and I are watching the boat and having coffee is closed. Crew passes by over the grass just below us. We wave and smile (ufika salama, arrive well), like the royal family to their people. Philemon climbs the terrace to say goodbye. Crew cleared!
The rest of the day we spend to make a good tent construction that will keep the deck and hatch openings dry. Ben decided to leave his room and go on the boat. Still waiting for my Netherlands ING e-bank speed wire of one week ago (should arrive in 1 or 2 days), I cannot pay my bill. Why the hell does internet-bank wiring not go at the speed of internet? Where are those petty criminals who still manage to tamper with all international electronic money traffic, to put their dirty hands on your money for a short while of profitable business? The music business mafia surrendered to internet, why not the banks? If one bank in the world would install the proper secure money wire server, it would have half of the world's money traffic in a few months! Instead of charging us - most of us are ready! - they involuntarily charge the entire global business world by deliberately delaying.
Unwilling to confess being among the fools who still do not know how to avoid being a temporary bank hostage, I simply keep my room.
All banks are equal, but some banks are more equal than others. My parents sent me some emergency money speed from Netherlands ABNAMRO, which would arrive, OK not after 2, but three days, so my "I still need that room" act could stop after 1 day only.